The Computer Society of Kenya

Since 1986

kemsaDAILY NATION By JOHN KABUCHI

Wednesday April 06 2022

Information Technology (IT) solutions provide limitless opportunities to facilitate much-needed efficiency at the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) as part of organisational reforms.

Kemsa is mandated to ensure supply chain excellence for Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) to ensure positive health outcomes.

The Authority, like never before, is banking on technology and a fit-for-purpose human resource base to meet its mandate.

IT investments at the Authority are also geared at plugging procurement loopholes, enhancing integrity, transparency and accountability at Kemsa.

As part of the Kemsa reform plan, we have ramped up strategies to offer automated web-based enterprise and customer-facing services.

The strategies are designed to enhance the availability of business systems and ensure continuity of business operations while underscoring compliance with best practice frameworks, standards, procedures and governance policies.

IT systems came in handy in the last financial year when we celebrated several milestones. In the first instance, to support the national scale-up of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme, Kemsa procured Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) worth Sh35.84 billion, and distributed them to more than 11,500 health facilities in the last financial year.

To ensure accountability, in the last financial year, we scaled up the award-winning Kemsa Electronic Proof of Deliveries or e-POD app to more than 45 counties.

The e-POD app keeps track of Kemsa supplies to primary health facilities through the simple touch of a button and was developed to improve essential HPT deliveries across Kenya.

The app is an in-house ICT solution developed through a public-private partnership between Kemsa and Coca-Cola Beverage Africa with the support of UNFPA.

The e-POD app is powered by Kemsa’s Logistic Management Information System (LMIS) and the Ministry of Health District Health Information System (DHIS), enabling data visibility across the supply chain system and contributing to data accuracy between the National and County operating levels.

The development of this web-based Warehouse Management system and linkage to LMIS and DHIS has improved efficiency through a touch of the button tool that provides stocks visibility at Kemsa regional warehouses.

Turnaround time

The solution has also contributed to enhancing the acknowledgment of deliveries at the health facilities.

The application also monitors order turnaround time to avert delays in delivery which can cause stock-out of essential health commodities at the facility level.

At the organisational level, the deployment of ICT solutions has also seen the redesign of crucial warehouse and logistics processes.

This has reduced the order turnaround time from 46 days in February 2021 to 18 days at the end of Kemsa on top of its game, the intelligent deployment of technologies that will play an essential role in making the healthcare supply chain more effective and efficient will continue to be a priority focus area.

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